I’m rather a bit of a David Carr fan. Smart, witty (as opposed to funny) and a keenly observant man and good writer.
Grrrrrr, but by now the news that Fareed Zakaria escaped being accused along with Jonah Lehrer for Crimes of the Plagiarism Kind is old news.
But what is new news, to me at least, is that Mr. Carr thinks far less of himself and far more of Mr. Lehrer than I do, and I’m bothered by his assessment of the situationa, as in:
So are he (Lehrer) and I in the same business? Not by a long shot. He is smarter than I will ever be, and has written three best sellers while being paid thousands of dollars for speaking engagements. The other difference? I never made up quotes, lied about it and resigned in disgrace, as Mr. Lehrer recently did. (I say that with zero malice and a knowledge that pointing a crooked finger can backfire). – David Carr
Someone please tell me when making up quotes, lying about it and resigning in disgrace qualifies as “smart?” Or is Carr talking about Lehrer having written three best sellers and being paid thousands of dollars in speaking engagements? Why does that qualify Lehrer as being smart? But I’m not going to nitpick those points, because my proof that Carr’s analysis of himself is incorrect is this statement:
I once lost a job I dearly wanted because I had misspelled the name of the publisher of the publication I was about to go to work for. Not very smart, but I learned a brutal lesson that has stayed with me. Nobody ever did that for Mr. Lehrer, even after repeated questions were raised about his work. – David Carr
Had Lehrer a shred of Carr’s respect, either for himself, or for the craft of writing/journalism/reporting/blogging he would not have had to resign from The New Yorker in the first place.
Over and over again I read, not only in Carr’s article, but everywhere else, beliefs about journalism online, such as Post and Post Often, You Are Only As Good (or Visible) as Your Last Post, the Voracious Appetite of the Internet for Endless Content Makes People Lose Their Integrity.
I beg to differ. The voracious appetite of the Internet does not make people do anything they wouldn’t have done to begin with.
Every day someone tells me I should post more often. I could, I suppose, but there are limits on my time and if I wanted to obey the dictum, I could just post stuff. I choose not to do that.
I think people who want to “make it” often have a perilous decision to face. It sometimes involves a willingness to say No. Not a word that any of us like to invoke when we want to be employed and earn a pay check.
But not saying No sometimes leads to all sorts of problems, such as Lehrer’s.
I have a theory that things always happen in threes. Today, Director Tony Scott (very sad) died and so did Phyllis Diller. There will be another soon.
And there were the Jonah Lehrer and (almost) Fareed Zakaria (whom I like) plagiarism stories. Whose will be the next sketchy journalism story?
Cheers,
GM
August 21, 2012 at 12:42 am
Not, that’s “the other difference”. Smart people can do dumb things.
But, to me that reads like “praise proceeding pillorying”. It makes you humble, it make you not a hater of the person and it make your attack stronger.
August 21, 2012 at 12:44 am
Kindly elaborate Paul Duggan…
August 21, 2012 at 12:49 am
Giselle Minoli I read the same essay today and I understand where you’re coming from. He’s clearly talking about a profession that has, for more and more people, lost its standards. And I think the example you cited where Carr speaks about his formative years as a journalist, he’s further saying, the younger generation of journalists don’t even get exposed to someone higher up toughening them up and teaching them a discipline of the profession by threatening them with being fired for even the smallest of mistakes.
I didn’t take away that Carr was really putting himself down. I think he was being generous about Leher’s brainpower in his subject matter expertise; and yes, maybe Carr was being more than a bit modest so as to not come off as someone from on high condemning something. This way he shakes that and gets to point out the lack of integrity today.
What I got out of the perplexing end of the piece was that in this new insatiable web-appetite world, even those who have abused the trust of journalistic standards can make a comeback… I think he’s indirectly saying managements are too forgiving.
I have no idea why Fareed Zakaria gets spared by admitting his “mistake”. I think he should have been hing out to dry and NOT forgiven. What is the point of standards if you can break them and say “sorry, won’t do it again”.
Your few lines above explain it all:
(( I beg to differ. The voracious appetite of the Internet does not make people do anything they wouldn’t have done to begin with.
There are limits on my time and if I wanted to obey the dictum, I could just post stuff. I choose not to do that. ))
August 21, 2012 at 12:54 am
“I’ll never be as great a person as Hitler. I’m not a public speaker, not a great leader, but then again, I’ve never murder millions of people.”
August 21, 2012 at 1:03 am
Paul Duggan Don’t know whether to laugh…or shudder. 😉
Richard Hoefer you are dead on right about Carr’s means to an end. How unfortunate that he couldn’t claim to be the better and smarter man (because he is) without being called arrogant. (Funny that we can humbly accept compliments from others but God forbid we give them to ourselves. But that’s an aside…)
Sigh. I tend to agree with you about Zakaria. He is minting money (way much more than Lehrer), and that scandal would be huge, huge, huge. I believe the excuse was that he was burning the candle at all possible ends, and…Ooopsy.
I admit that I had not known Zakaria had admitted to plagiarism. I had only read (prior to Carr’s article) that he had been investigated, forgiven and reinstated.
I am bothered by all of this. People do make mistakes. Writers are so very public. So, bottom line…is it the intent that matters in the end? Possibly.
August 21, 2012 at 1:06 am
Best move is just to invoke Godwin’s Law.
August 21, 2012 at 3:48 am
Giselle Minoli First let me note how much more efficient Paul Duggan was than I. His three words (( “praise proceeding pillorying” )) summed up what I took a paragraph to say. … Giselle I can tell you are more uncomfortable about calling out Zakaria. He’s respected by so many people. But you say it in your first post: These people have to be responsible and CUT their obligations. Sorry Fareed, but maybe you just can’t do multiple gigs as full time jobs. So drop one and be responsible. Why should I feel sorry for anyone who is spreading themselves too thin, and let’s face it, enjoys being on camera. How about choose the gig you want and do it as well as you can.
(( People do make mistakes. Writers are so very public. So, bottom line…is it the intent that matters in the end? )) What if a Doctor accidentally gives you a wrong shot, and you’re allergic to whatever you were given, plus the fact of that wrong substance in your blood stream, but… he’s such a good doctor, and means well, but he was up late with his guest appearance on Doctor Oz, so, is it really that bad what he did? are you going to accept that?
For me it doesn’t wash. I think it sets a very bad example to have total forgiveness for Zakaria. It pretty much ratifies the idea that if your are a big brand name, you get special rules.
Should Rick Sanchez have been forgiven and gotten his job back at CNN? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/01/rick-sanchez-fired-from-c_n_747607.html
(this is just rhetorical, not to you directly) If not, why not? He made a mistake but one he was aware of, just like Zakaria was aware he was “cheating”
August 21, 2012 at 1:36 pm
I find it interesting that there would be a lot less forgiving going around if the story was of, let’s say, a doctor, who, because he was burning the candle at many ends, had made an “oopsie” and killed someone of botched a surgery. Yes, this is a little extreme, after all it is only journalism, but…professional integrity should matter. In fact, it should matter to anyone who is a professional in any arena. If I, as a professional, know I am dealing with cheaters, it directly devalues my hard-earned status.
The truth is, with athletes leading the charge, the word “professional” is quickly becoming a pejorative term. “He is a professional” is coming to mean he will lie, cheat, and steal to win at any costs.
Hmmm, maybe this devaluing of professionalism is not such a bad thing after all – back to amateur Olympics and those absolutely wonderful amateur naturalists of days gone by?
August 21, 2012 at 3:34 pm
I’d still take Jonah Lehrer over the vast majority of science journalism any day.
He certainly should be called to account, but “Science” journalists grossly oversimplify or misrepresent science stories all the time. While an article reporting “both sides” of a “controversial” subject like evolution or vaccination may not outright lie, it does more harm than misquoting Bob Dylan ever could.
The Jonah Lehrer story hit me hard because I value his talent and work. I hope he learns a valuable lesson and finds his way back to respectability.
Also, let us remember that for every high profile story like Lehrer, there may well be scores of similar incidents that conscientious editors (or vigilant internet watchdogs) have dealt with before they percolated up to the awareness of the general public. We seem to see a glut of journalistic misrepresentation, but we also have more voices, and more accessible ways to fact-check, than ever before. The internet has allowed more reporting of all types; more of everything means more crap, along with more quality.
August 21, 2012 at 6:19 pm
Leo Campos and Richard Hoefer I’m stunned at both of you invoking the medical profession and its various microscopic examination of doctors’ mistakes. Last evening, when I was posting that comment, I was going to invoke the same because my husband is a surgeon and we talk about this all the time. How doctors are not allowed to make any mistakes without being complained about, sued, what have you, and then I took it out because it seemed to go down an altogether different track and one that, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure I have an ability to be completely objective about it because of all of those discussions.
It is the perfect analogy, however, because it has to do with what we are willing to excuse and what we are not willing to excuse and where we make “excuses” for those biases in our minds and hearts. We “forgive” Wall Street for its abuses against our collective economy because they are white collar executives who we simply don’t want to believe could commit intentional and active financial crimes. Yet we will lock up a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks for stealing and give him/her such a harsh sentence that perhaps they might never make it to the other side of the track if they only run into people who judge them by their one “mistake.”
As Carr points out, in the online world, everything is mutable and easily forgotten. So Lehrer, who is a financial cash cow for someone will get back on track and Zakaria’s “oopsie” will be forgiven because it wasn’t intentional, whereas some doctor whose schedule is overstressed and has an “oopsie” can actually lose their license?
However, I have a creepy hunch, which is that were it not such a public world anymore, where every conceivable transgression is news itself everywhere, were any of these slips ups discovered by the employers and no one else I think it would all vanish under the proverbial rug. There is such a thing as controlling a spin. That in itself is an art.
August 21, 2012 at 6:24 pm
David Cybulski I wished that you had given an example of such a scientific claim. Unless you are speaking generally about meds that are taken off the market after they are proved to be dangerous. There seem to be a lot of those. But, honestly, science is another area where the respectability of the field seems to be under serious attack. I was having a conversation with a young medical student and his wife who were over to dinner recently and they were talking about a creationist museum where there is an exhibit of human beings walking around under the bodies of these huge dinosaurs, which led to a conversation about where they are going to send their children to school in the future where they can actually “learn” about evolution. And this medical student said something like, “Hey, I mean, when I take a test I actually have to have learned the science. I can’t just say, well, I don’t believe in science so I’m not going to take the test.”
Meaning that none of us can just believe whatever we please. And so, Lehrer, can’t make up quotes. Back to the beginning, I’m afraid.
August 21, 2012 at 9:03 pm
Giselle Minoli
We are both in agreement that science is another area that is slipping in standards; the evolution example you give is getting at exactly what I am talking about. Global warming, evolution, and safe vaccines are false debates that science journalists often present with false balance. To me, this false balance is worse than a misattributed Bob Dylan quote or recycling pieces of his own blog posts, and Mr. Lehrer has (as far as I know) been responsible in the way that he reports these things. He frequently tackles psychology, one of my favorite subjects, with clarity and fairness, and without headline grabbing hyperbole or dumbing it down.
Of course he shouldn’t make up quotes. As I said, he should be called to account, re-pay his dues, and work his way back to respectability through responsible work. Due to his talent, passion for the work, and otherwise generally responsible reporting, I think it likely that he can learn his lesson here and some back a better reporter.
August 21, 2012 at 10:51 pm
Giselle Minoli David Cybulski … shoot. I wrote a response to both your replies above, and lost it completely when one of these shifts in the stream happened… oh how I wish they had auto save draft, like in Gmail. So, I will be much briefer. Thank you both for having a robust discussion here, where issues get processed, distinctions made, and value judgments are expressed. In my experience on G+, this is very rare… and it’s only 3 people here, so i thank both of you. Second, I really think David has nailed it with this (( be called to account, re-pay his dues, and work his way back to respectability through responsible work. )) Understood that you value his excellence in writing about science, but I’m glad you feel he has to rebuild some trust.
Third, I was trying to think of cases involving Hollywood, where actors were prevented from acting for X amount of time while they carried out a sentence of community service in lieu of jail. Obviously a huge difference between violating one’s professional standards and breaking a law… but the idea is similar to some degree that you have to pay for that in being suspended from your profession, and the intent is for (and actor/actress) to take it seriously and not just blow it off. Another obvious thing is that Lindsey Lohan is a terrible example because of her multiple violations of her sentencings.
But I recall Michael Keaton, from the first Batman movie, had a bad drug problem, and (if I recall correctly – since I see nothing in his wikipedia entry) and I believe was sentenced to community service and could not take on acting roles.
And then there’s Aaron Sorkin, caught “transporting hallucinogenic mushrooms, rock cocaine, and marijuana in a carry-on bag.” (Note: this was copied and pasted frpom the ABC news article here: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=104098&page=1#.UDQJZETB6-4 ) In exchange for Sorkin pleading guilty, the judge sentenced him to 24 months of drug rehabilitation treatment – and as I recall, he was not the show runner and writer of The West Wing during that time. That was a real penalty… and again different from the plagiarists because Sorkin committed a crime. The plagiarists committed a violation of core principles of their profession.
August 22, 2012 at 12:08 am
I hate it when that happens Richard Hoefer, which is often these days and everyone is complaining about it. Back at you later. Off to a Tango lesson!